Chiefly manuscript newsletters addressed to Sir Richard Bulstrode and letters, documents,
and manuscripts of writings by various English historical figures, all gathered together
by the twentieth-century American book collector Carl H. Pforzheimer. Prominent figures
represented include Oliver Cromwell, John Donne, Elizabeth I, John Evelyn, John Locke,
Samuel Pepys, Sir Walter Raleigh, and others.

Call Number:

Manuscript Collection MS-3244

Language:

Predominantly English, but also includes Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Latin, and Spanish

Access:

Access: Open for research. The Pforzheimer manuscripts have also been individually cataloged and all manuscripts are being digitized. The descriptions, digital images, and transcriptions (when available), are being added to the Harry Ransom Center Digital Collections as digitization is completed.

Processed by:
Elon Lang, Lydia Fletcher, and Joan Sibley, 2013; we gratefully acknowledge the assistance
of James A. Winn, Melissa Schoenberger, and Newton Key in connection with the Bulstrode
newsletters.

Repository: :

The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center

Carl Howard Pforzheimer was born in New York, the son of Isaac and Mina Heyman Pforzheimer,
on January 29, 1879. He was a collector of books since his teens, when he began his
career as a runner on Wall Street. By the age of 23, he had his own firm on the New
York Stock Exchange that specialized in trading oil companies, and as his wealth grew,
he began collecting rare printed editions and manuscripts. By his early forties, he
had established himself as one of the preeminent private book collectors of the twentieth
century, competing at auctions with Henry C. Folger, Henry E. Huntington, John Pierpont
Morgan, George D. Smith, and his long-time friend and mentor, Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach
of Philadelphia.

While Percy Shelley and the nineteenth-century Romantics were Pforzheimer's special
interest, his primary objective was "to secure the important books of English literature
and, when available, rarities and unique copies." Pforzheimer certainly achieved his
aim: he gathered together a library that included rare early editions of Tudor and
Elizabethan literature and essays (including works of Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare,
John Skelton, and Edmund Spenser); incunabula including a Gutenberg Bible and seven
books by the first English printer, William Caxton; rare editions of eighteenth and
nineteenth century works by Robert Burns, Lewis Carroll, Daniel Defoe, and Walt Whitman;
and the most complete known gathering of manuscripts, letters, and first editions
of writers in the Shelley circle, including formerly unpublished letters of Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley. In 1940, Pforzheimer published a three-volume catalog of his library's holdings
titled The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library: English Literature, 1475-1700.

Pforzheimer died on April 4, 1957, predeceased by his wife, the former Lily Oppenheimer,
and survived by two children, son Carl H., Jr. and daughter Mrs. Jane P. Long. Control
over his library was transferred to The Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation, Inc.,
which donated the Shelley collection to the New York Public Library in 1986. In that
year, most of the Pforzheimer Library's "non-Shelley" books (including the Gutenberg
Bible) and manuscripts were acquired at auction by the Harry Ransom Center.

The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of English Manuscripts comprises 1,952 items dating
from 1485-1844 (bulk 1530-1722). The collection is dominated by manuscript newsletters
addressed to Sir Richard Bulstrode (1469), plus letters (370), documents (57), manuscripts
of writings (52), and other items (4) chiefly created by English notables including
Oliver Cromwell, John Donne, Elizabeth I, John Evelyn, John Locke, Samuel Pepys, and
Sir Walter Raleigh, or by other English or European monarchs, nobles, and aristocrats.
While most manuscripts in this collection are indeed written in English, there are
a number of items written wholly or partially in French (288), and a few pieces in
Dutch (3), Greek (1), Italian (3), Latin (7), or Spanish (6). The collection is arranged
in three series: I. English Manuscripts, 1485-1844; II. Bulstrode Manuscripts, 1641-1837;
and III. Original Manuscript Descriptions and Housings.

The first series is smaller than the second, but contains more diverse holdings created
over a longer span of time. Several conceptual groupings are represented, such as
correspondence by or pertaining to Sir Walter Raleigh; documents signed by participants
in the regicide of King Charles I of England; and letters by English thinkers from
the Enlightenment period of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Highlights
include letters by Oliver Cromwell, John Locke, and Samuel Pepys, as well as several
letters of English monarchs, including Henry VII and James I, and a group of letters
and documents signed by Elizabeth I pertaining to her failed marriage suit with François,
Duke of Anjou. Literary connections include letters by playwright William Congreve;
poet John Donne; designs and letters by John Evelyn the diarist, essayist, and gardener;
and a rare copy of Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar translated into Latin. Many manuscripts are bound into unique extra-illustrated volumes
assembled in the mid-nineteenth century that also contain rare artistic prints and
portraiture, many of which are vividly colored.

The larger second series is comprised of manuscripts from the Bulstrodes, an aristocratic
English family that was prominent in Middlesex in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Most of the manuscripts in this series are associated with Sir Richard Bulstrode (1610-1711),
a diplomat stationed in Brussels, who received the 1,469 handwritten newsletters in
this collection from offices in London while he was stationed abroad, 1667-1689. These
newsletters provided Bulstrode with information from England that could not be printed
in public newspapers. In return, Bulstrode, along with other newsletter subscribers,
mailed personal accounts of news and politics from their regions along with copies
of local newspapers back to London. Together with a supplemental set of letters between
Bulstrode, Joseph Williamson (the owner of the principal newsletter office), and clerks
from the Secretary of State's office (who also worked in Williamson's office), the
Pforzheimer Collection preserves one of the world's largest records of early correspondence
journalism. In addition to the Bulstrode newsletters, this series also contains several
manuscripts by Richard Bulstrode's second son, Whitelocke Bulstrode (1650-1724), a
government administrator and religious essayist, as well as manuscripts and documents
associated with other members of the Bulstrode family.

The final series retains items that were associated with individual Pforzheimer manuscripts
before they arrived at the Ransom Center, including original paper envelopes and folders
used to house the documents when held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library or the Alfred
Morrison Collection, as well as accompanying descriptions or notes.

Additional items related to the following individuals are held by the Ransom Center
in other collections, including:

Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma – see Popular Imagery Collection; Ranuzzi Family
Collection

Outside of the Ransom Center, the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His
Circle is owned by the New York Public Library and holds some 25,000 books, manuscripts,
letters, and other objects, chiefly from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.

For researchers interested in Sir Richard Bulstrode, a substantial collection of his
letters to Secretary of State Henry Coventry, written from Brussels, 1674-1686, is
held at Longleat House, Wiltshire, U.K., in the Coventry Papers, Vols. 29-32. These
are published in microfilm by Microform Academic Publishers, Wakefield, U.K. The Yale
University Beinecke Library also holds six letters from Sir Joseph Williamson to Bulstrode,
1674-1679, in the Osborne Manuscripts, Files 16204-16209, and other works associated
with Bulstrode in the Osborne Manuscripts, Files 2162-2166.

Additional collections of seventeenth-century newsletters similar to the Pforzheimer
Bulstrode newsletters are available at several other repositories. The following is
a list of notable external collections, some of which have been microfilmed or published
in print editions:

Kew, Richmond, Surrey, U.K. The National Archives: Greenwich Hospital Newsletters,
containing newsletters sent to Lord Derwentwater 1673-1696; see the Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Records of the Admiralty ADM 77 & 78.

London, U.K. British Library: Additional MSS 72595-72597, newsletters from London
sent to William Trumbull while he was stationed in Paris and Constantinople, 1683-1711.

Los Angeles, CA. University of California, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library:
MS.1951.021/ Pole Family News Collection, containing 266 manuscript newsletters from
London sent to members of the Pole family of Radbourne, Derbyshire, 1681-1710; former
shelfmark fC6976M2 1692-1710 Boxed.

Manchester, U.K. University of Manchester, John Rylands University Library: GB 133
GB 133 Eng MS 114/ Newsletters to Sir William Temple, William Blathwayte, and others,
from Joseph Williamson, Henry Muddiman and others, containing 204 newsletters, 1667-1679,
in four volumes;

Manchester, U.K. University of Manchester, John Rylands University Library: Legh Family
of Lyme Muniments, at least 22 newsletters, 1679-1715, interspersed among personal
correspondence, according to Lady Newton's Lyme Letters 1660-1760, London: William Heinemann, 1925, p. 105ff.

Oxford, U.K. Bodleian Library: MS Carte 72/ Carte Papers, newsletters addressed to
the 1st Duke of Ormond, 1660-1685, giving Proceedings of the English Parliament, and
news of the Netherlands, France and Germany, 1660-1685.

San Marino, CA. Huntington Library: HM 66704-66716, newsletters addressed to members
of the Parker Family of Browsholme, Yorkshire, 1635-1693;

San Marino, CA. Huntington Library: HM 30314-30315, newsletters addressed to Sir Leoline
Jenkins, 1676-1680; see also the entry "Benson, Francis," in the Guide to British Historical Manuscripts in the Huntington Library, p. 286;

San Marino, CA. Huntington Library: Acquisition Lot 2959, Sotheby's sale of 26 June
1974: 200 newsletters, reports, and other papers sent to Sir Leoline Jenkins and to
his secretary Dr. Owen Wynne, 1676-1680.

Wiltshire, U.K. Longleat House: MSS 68, 77-79, 79A, 80-85, 85A, 86-88/ The Muddiman
Newsletters, containing thousands of consecutive newsletters dated on alternate days
by Henry Muddiman, 29 April 1667-12 October 1689; see also the Appendix to the Third Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, p.184.

The Ransom Center Library holds the complementary Pforzheimer Library of Early English
Literature, which contains over 1,100 volumes of plays, poems, novels, essays, polemical
writings, and translations from the most influential and representative English writers
of the period 1475 to 1700. These books are cataloged online in The University of
Texas Library Catalog. All major writers (for example Bacon, Congreve, Donne, Marlowe,
Marvell, Milton, Shakespeare, and Spenser) are available in first and important editions.
The Milton holdings are enhanced by a copy of Comus with the author's manuscript annotations (call number PFORZ 714 PFZ). The Shakespeare
plays and poems include several quarto editions of plays and all four of the folio
editions of his works; the Marlowe books include great rarities.